CometAl

Saturday, January 17, 2015

I don't think I will ever qualify for NASA, so the next best fun and easy thing is KSP.
Kerbal Space Program, lets you build, launch, operate, and launch into planetary orbits you own space craft. Lots of fun going through the learning curve to a stable orbit. I made a little shuttle transport, that does not land well...crash landing... and a small space station to dock with. Great for those cloudy days and nights.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Two comets are currently good evening objects here in my backyard. Comet C/2012 K1 PANSTARRS is over head and fading as it moves away. While C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy is rising to be in high position near the zenith by late December. This comet is the one to watch it could get as bright as mag 5.0 and show a long dynamic tail.

Update- 20141212 The clouds finally passed and I was able to get a good set of 45sec images. The comet appears green and stellar, not much tail to be seen here...

Update 20141214 - Tried to get spectra data using a Star Analyzer 100, the fuzzy part.

update 20141217 - Another go at getting some spectra data, still to close to noise to have any thing definite....

update 20141220 - I can now see the tail in my images with an exposure of 60 secs. A combination of the comet getting closer and it rising higher in my sky.....sum of 14x60 sec images using the EON 80 mm scope and unmodded canon 450D. processed from raw images.

Update 20141228 - Got some good 60 sec subs and a small group of spectra subs. Here is the result of processing using imagej.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Another effort in the cold of the evening, the dew and cold eventually beat me. The comet approaches as seen in the EON 80mm using DMK51 imager.

C20131A1 and NGC362

Update 20140830 - A much milder evening, not as cold. And as C2013A1 was passing by 47 Tuc and SMC. I had another go . A small image. I can't seem to get much light out of the EON 80 mm so may be bigger light bucket?

C2013A1 passing by 47 Tuc

Update - 20140905 - This small comet moving along....

Update 20140906 A little bit closer to Mars.....

update 20140927 - Looking for this comet in current STEREO images is proving difficult, I think I have it in this colored scaled crop from HI2B wide fov.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

20140820 – This is a sneek peek, as I am still working on this blog entry...8)

I recently found out that current browser updates now include many experimental features. One of the current good ones is the WEB Audio API. This is a very sophisticated set tool tools to control and manipulate audio within the browser context.

Not just start and stop but many signal processing things can be done to the audio data. So, with this new knowledge. I wondered if I could re-write the processing.org version of the RADMC_Pingometer into a browser based version?

Well, as fate would have I was learning HTML5,JS,CSS,PHP,JQuery via the Codecadmey.com online learning . I highly recommend this learn by example method used by Codecademy.

So, with this little bit of knowledge, I started with raw HTML5,WEB audio api , and promptly blew a few brain cells. Then looking around at all the good examples found in google searches. I found that there was a simpler way. The gang at P5.js have made it easier to convert processing.org Pde’s into P5.js. It is really a modified and adapted processing into web based components. And as luck would have it the Web Audio api is well catered for.

After a few weeks of basic discovery on how things are written in P5.js. I was able to modify a good simple example into the meteor counting tool I had wanted. Ta…Da….

browser based meteor counter

It runs from a local host httpserver via a link, so you will need a local server to make it work for you. See the P5.js site for some info on that.

To start playing around with this your self, get the P5.js download and examples working for you. The under this, down load my set of files from the google drive share. A link to your save location of these files via the local http server should show the above web page.

As this is trying to do experimental things in your browser some settings need to be adjusted. In CHROME the developer mode needs to be set on. try to get a current version update or experiment with CHROME canary version.

Some example pings captured from example Audio wav file.

Ok, so this might seem a little bit complicated, but if you understand what's happening here then, hang in there.

How to Setup

This is for the windows users, get yourself the wampserver download from the web, and let it install into the C:/wamp/ location on your drive. A c:/wamp/www directory will be made at that location. That’s where the index.html will launch from and the other web pages and supporting files are below this. A small bit of configuration may be required to make the wampserver listen on another port, find httpd.conf in this location in the wamp directory tree,
Change the listen port number 80 on line 58 to say 4080, or some other number. When done restart all services via the wampserver manager tool some where on your tool bar.
When we re done we should be able to launch three tabs in google chrome , like this…
Next, get P5.js from the web and expand it into the c:/wamp/www location. Then get my files from the google share and expand them to the same location.
Goole share here, Share files, get index.html and spwrdbutton.gif